/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22940529]

It's boring as fuck and McCarthy's writing style is utterly intolerable.

[Anonymous No.22940610]

Man's evil and God done made man so God mus be evil.

[Anonymous No.22940628]

[spoilers]Cormac McCarthy is a Catholic. For religious people, and especially Catholics, with their felt intimacy with God, the biggest problem in the world is the presence of evil. Blood Meridian is a metaphysical allegory that attempts to reconcile the presence of evil with the existence of God. Judge Holden represents God. He is above good and evil. These are concepts that man has devised to describe acts or thoughts that are compatible or not with God’s will. To God they mean nothing. The Judge is totally amoral. The ex-priest Tobin is the devil. Like Satan, he was once God’s servant (priest or, in the metaphysical realm, angel). Just as the devil tried to tempt Jesus in the wilderness, so Tobin tries to tempt the Kid in the desert. He tries to get him to kill the Judge. There is no reason why the Kid should do this. The only reason we think the Judge wants to kill the KId is that Tobin implies it. In fact we know that the Judge did not kill Brown or Toadvine, and he had ample opportunity to kill the Kid but did not do so. He is in fact, throughout the book, looking out for him. He pursues him through the desert to save him from the devil. The Kid is the human embodiment of God, or as Catholics would have it, God the Son. (God the Holy Ghost is the idiot. Remember, in literature the word “idiot” may not have its conventional meaning, cf Dostoevsky). At the end of the book, the Kid goes to a dark place a bit removed from where people gather. Jesus was buried in a cave, from where he ascended to heaven, or as is sometimes stated “gathered to the bosom of the Lord” or “gathered him in his arms against his immense and terrible flesh”. For Catholics, the mystery of the Trinity, which this scene represents is sublimely “terrible”, hence the onlookers’ shock at seeing it enacted. Anyone who thinks that the act in this scene is an act of sodomy, should read the book again and realise that such a facile ending would be totally incompatible with the intricate structure of theological allegory that the author has painstakingly built over the previous 300 or so pages.[/spoiler]
https://reason49.wordpress.com/2012/07/10/immense-and-terrible-flesh-the-ending-of-blood-meridian/

[Anonymous No.22940631]

>>22940529
During the early to mid summer of 2019, i rented it from the local library after it was recommended to me. several pages into the story, i quickly realized that i hated it but i still forced myself to read about 1/3 of its contents despite detesting every fucking excruciating second of it. what a torturous pile of shit, it blows my mind that people enjoy this novel unironically. they probably also like eating garbage & getting pissed on & having their balls stomped too

[Anonymous No.22940634]

There's no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous.
The New York Times, April 19, 1992, "Cormac McCarthy's Venomous Fiction" by Richard B. Woodward
I'm not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.
The Wall Street Journal, November 20, 2009, "Hollywood's Favorite Cowboy" by John Jurgensen
I don't think goodness is something that you learn. If you're left adrift in the world to learn goodness from it, you would be in trouble.
The Wall Street Journal, November 20, 2009, "Hollywood's Favorite Cowboy" by John Jurgensen
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cormac_McCarthy

[Anonymous No.22940652]

>>22940634
>There's no such thing as life without bloodshed
how many people did mccarthy personally kill again throughout his life?

[Anonymous No.22940705]

>>22940529

[Anonymous No.22940722]

>describing the sun rising as a "phallus"
Was McCarthy retarded?

[Anonymous No.22940737]

>>22940722
You just have no imagination.

[Anonymous No.22940744]

>>22940631
You just have low IQ. Stop coping.

[Anonymous No.22940982]

>>22940634
Mccarthy was the pampered son of a lawyer who never did hard work or experienced violence in his life and lived vicariously through it with his shit writings
its why blood meridian feels so fake

[Anonymous No.22940986]

scullery shillelagh swale anchorite* bacca jacal scoria vadose reliquary corbel cairn* mesquite pyracantha nopal campesino pirouette querent beldam aubergine loutish surbate apishamore spume frieze* gastine* dervish pyrolatrous chancre weal furlong coulee* gobbet* acequia kiva tapadero lucent* fontanel remuda larder bursar cartouche debouch* churlish quadrille toper argosy esker bivouac* hovel supernumerary shako caparison serried* devonian tektite ristra pulque charivari ciborium vidette solpuga vinegarroon pulmonary falstaffian alameda jornada priapic*** procrustean baize* systole croupier* dowser* bower revetment clemency windrow scapegrace votive

all the words I looked up on my third reading of Blood Meridian. I put an asterisk next to the words I'd actually consider useful.

yes this is my third time posting this

[Anonymous No.22940990]

>>22940722
Whats your fucking problem?

[Anonymous No.22941000]

>>22940529
True

[Anonymous No.22941028]

>>22940982
Enough with your butthurt.

[Anonymous No.22941275]

>>22940529
Filtered

[Anonymous No.22941982]

>>22940982
He spent the majority of his life in self imposed poverty and lived like a bum. Suttree is basically an autobiography and he watched some friends die in barfights and the like.

[Anonymous No.22942005]

>>22940986
Clemency, really? Am I being trolled? Live a little.

[Anonymous No.22942014]

>>22940628
Interesting. But how do you interpret the Judge raping kids in every town they visit?

[Anonymous No.22942021]

>>22940529
Blood Meridian is really the ultimate filter. Never meet anyone who hated that had good taste in writing.

[Anonymous No.22943053]

>>22940529
This book is reddit tier of writing. I was laughing to myself at each "deep" quote and couldn't help but think of it as such. Anytime a character would monologue, like the judges speech, I could see redditors upvoting it. Such a joke, anyone who has taste would see this book as little more then a joke. Anyone saying "filtered" is part of the problem. I am so sick of seeing posts about this trash book.

[Anonymous No.22943084]

>>22940628
nah that's retarded

[Anonymous No.22943316]

>>22943053
>complains about people using the word filtered
>proceeds to complain about "depth" in Blood Meridian.

[Anonymous No.22943366]

>>22942014
I spit out my drink after reading all that and then this response

[Anonymous No.22943373]

>>22943366
I try anon.

[Anonymous No.22943383]

>>22940628
>metaphysical allegory that attempts to reconcile the presence of evil with the existence of God
No. If you're going for religious interpretations it's about trying to rise to the level of God and the different forms of evil such entails.

[Anonymous No.22943389]

I liked the book, especially for the environment and the violence. It was sometimes tiring to read.

When he breaks into transcendental rambling, you can't take every sentence literally. You have to kind of glaze over them which will mash together to form a dreamy, twilight feeling. You can tell that was his intention when he breaks into these ramblings(when they are sitting around a fire at night, when they are walking through desert flats) versus the very sober, succinct feeling of his writing when they are doing normal stuff like walking into town.

To put it into reddit terms, it's like the dark souls of literature.

[Anonymous No.22943538]

>>22940652
How many pounds of flesh have you consumed in your life?

[Anonymous No.22943563]

>>22940529
The guy rambles on way too much about the scenery. Even after having properly set the tone, and drawn me in he keeps going. The scenes are more interesting, but as it stands now I'm pretty sure they both have equal page time (or at least that's what it feels like). Also, the egregious use of the words "and" and "he" are more gross than any of the violence in the book.

[Anonymous No.22943749]

>>22940722
Probably. The only other being I can imagine portraying the sun in that manner is some horny nip animator, and even then it'd probably be done as a joke.

[Anonymous No.22943867]

>>22943053
you’re half-right in that all the redditors who see the ‘good writing’ in the book are only in judge holden’s meme speeches. They are missing the actual value of the book. I was mesmerised by his prose of the landscape and how it animated each individual across that western odyssey. People on the other side complain about the lack of characterization , but do not pay attention to how it is actually expressed.

[Anonymous No.22944223]

>>22940722
I genuinely rolled my eyes when I read that part. But I did find the passage about the men riding horses over the desert pretty stimulating

[Anonymous No.22944237]

>>22943867
Reddit likes a bunch of amazing books for all the wrong reasons.
Their the type to tell you to read Dickens because of its brilliant social criticism against being a rich asshole, as opposed to recommending him for the way he infuses a sense of magic into the urban landscape or his fantastical characters. They're the type of people that turn one off reading.

[Anonymous No.22944261]

>>22943084
Not me,i just read on the internet.
Honestly Judge Holden for me is personally human nature personified.
>>22942014
I think it´s the part that the evil is omnipresent really in this world,Judge Holden is really a force that it seems hard to defeat,there is the epilogue but it requires lot of will to defeat JH, i mean if you take out judge holden out of the book,it´s just a bunch of pillagers and scalpers of 19th century USA,nothing too shocking or outrageous in comparison to human history.
The key to discovering what the book really means is JUDGE HOLDEN.
For me he is malice that resides in humanity or mankind,just an archetype.
The epilogue says that he is wrong in everything read again again until you get what the fire means,i think it´s like Prometheus.
Honestly the only think that comes through my mind is The Book of Job.

[Anonymous No.22944264]

In the dawn there is a man progressing over the plain by means of holes which he is
making in the ground. He uses an implement with two handles and he chucks it into
the hole and he enkindles the stone in the hole with his steel hole by hole striking the
fire out of the rock which God has put there. On the plain behind him are the
wanderers in search of bones and those who do not search and they move haltingly in
the light like mechanisms whose movements are monitored with escapement and pallet
so that they appear restrained by a prudence or reflectiveness which has no inner reality
and they cross in their progress one by one that track of holes that runs to the rim of
the visible ground and which seems less the pursuit of some continuance than the
verification of a principle, a validation of sequence and causality as if each round and
perfect hole owed its existence to the one before it there on that prairie upon which are
the bones and the gatherers of bones and those who do not gather. He strikes fire in
the hole and draws out his steel. Then they all move on again.

[Anonymous No.22944306]

Theory: Blood Meridian is enjoyed by people with a strong capability of mental visualization and despised by the rest

[Anonymous No.22944336]

>>22944306
This. For those who can generate mental images, Blood Meridian is a visual splendor. If the same story and ideas were written in a Hemingway or Dostoevsky style it would be pretty mediocre.
Its all in the images.

[Anonymous No.22944344]

>see this book shilled for years
>decide to finally give it a go
>author likens a sunrise to a penis on the first page
stopped right there
americans are deranged

[Anonymous No.22944364]

>>22944344
you realise psychoanalysis was a huge phenomenon in continental europe?
freudian imagery is not deranged and is quite a common literary motif
even the greeks would not shy away from these sorts of descriptions
you're just a retard who doesn't see the symbolic connection between that brief sentence and the other themes of the novel
do some thinking for once prude

[Anonymous No.22944379]

>>22943053
Kys butthurt nigger.

[Anonymous No.22944380]

>>22944344
>decide to finally give it a go
>likens a sunrise to a penis on the first page
Except that doesn't happen until 50 pages in. You didn't read anything.

[Anonymous No.22944382]

>>22944344
I will only read classy French literature from now on.

[Anonymous No.22944383]

>>22943749
That's because ypu are an npc with no imagination. What's next? Everything that ever featured blood is edgy?

[Anonymous No.22944390]

>>22944380
It´s the Immense praise of the book.
Take a look who liked the book.
>Although the novel initially received lukewarm critical and commercial reception, it has since become highly acclaimed and is widely recognized as McCarthy's magnum opus and one of the greatest American novels of all time.[3] Some have labelled it the Great American Novel.[4] After multiple unsuccessful attempts to adapt the novel into a film, it was announced in April 2023 that New Regency is set to produce a feature film based on the novel.
>Blood Meridian initially received little recognition, but has since been recognized as a masterpiece and one of the greatest works of American literature. Some have called it the Great American Novel.[4] American literary critic Harold Bloom praised Blood Meridian as one of the 20th century's finest novels.[30] Aleksandar Hemon has called it "possibly the greatest American novel of the past 25 years".[31] David Foster Wallace named it one of the five most underappreciated American novels since 1960[32] and "[p]robably the most horrifying book of this [20th] century, at least [in] fiction."[33]

Time magazine included Blood Meridian in its "Time 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005".[34] In 2006 The New York Times conducted a poll of writers and critics regarding the most important works in American fiction from the previous 25 years, and Blood Meridian was a runner-up.[35]

Literary significance
There has been no consensus in the interpretation of the novel, and it has been said that the work "seems designed to elude interpretation".[36] One scholar has described Blood Meridian as:
Lyrical at times, at others simply archaic and recondite, at still others barely literate: the dissociative style of Blood Meridian defies accommodation to conventional assumptions. And that's the point.[25]

Nonetheless, academics and critics have suggested that Blood Meridian is nihilistic or strongly moral, a satire of the western genre or a savage indictment of Manifest Destiny. Harold Bloom called it "the ultimate western". J. Douglas Canfield described it as "a grotesque Bildungsroman in which we are denied access to the protagonist's consciousness almost entirely".[37] Richard Selzer declared that McCarthy "is a genius – also probably somewhat insane."[38] Critic Steven Shaviro wrote:
In the entire range of American literature, only Moby-Dick bears comparison to Blood Meridian. Both are epic in scope, cosmically resonant, obsessed with open space and with language, exploring vast uncharted distances with a fanatically patient minuteness. Both manifest a sublime visionary power that is matched only by still more ferocious irony. Both savagely explode the American dream of manifest destiny of racial domination and endless imperial expansion. But if anything, McCarthy writes with a yet more terrible clarity than does Melville.

—Steven Shaviro, "A Reading of Blood Meridian"[39]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Meridian

[Anonymous No.22944399]

>>22944380
my copy just had a really, really small font

[Anonymous No.22944404]

>>22944383
You like thinking about cock, and that's okay. I don't hate you.

[Anonymous No.22944415]

>>22944404
You don't? Oh you must have cut it off already.

[Anonymous No.22944459]

>>22944390
>he takes the opinions of "literary critics" seriously

[Anonymous No.22944481]

>>22944336
The description of the landscapes and violence felt so vivid. The scene where the kid is travelling during a storm gave me the same feeling I get when it is actually storming, it somehow manages to replicate the power of nature which is pretty cool. The people that hate the book seem bitter about something other than the book.

[Anonymous No.22944513]

>>22944306
Another theory: You can visualize something just fine, and still think the line is shit.

[Anonymous No.22944523]

>>22944481
It´s the fact that it´s easier to critique,harder in some cases even impossible to write a book,themes,plot,character,purple prose in order to rebuke.
So they critique.
Not that the book is not even perfect and yes,contrary to what people think there are some legitimate critiques that can be made,but that´s different.

[Anonymous No.22944549]

>>22940529
>It's boring as fuck and McCarthy's writing style is utterly intolerable.
Nice criticism but you seemed to post Blood Meridian and not Suttree.

[Anonymous No.22944573]

this board gets more and more zoomers every year, and with more zoomers comes more of the great filtering.

[Anonymous No.22944598]

>>22944573
See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes
the scullery fire. Outside lie dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods
beyond that harbor yet a few last wolves. His folk are known for hewers of wood and
drawers of water but in truth his father has been a schoolmaster. He lies in drink, he
quotes from poets whose names are now lost. The boy crouches by the fire and watches
him.
Night of your birth. Thirty-three. The Leonids they were called. God how the stars did
fall. I looked for blackness, holes in the heavens. The Dipper stove.
The mother dead these fourteen years did incubate in her own bosom the creature who
would carry her off. The father never speaks her name, the child does not know it. He
has a sister in this world that he will not see again. He watches, pale and unwashed.
He can neither read nor write and in him broods already a taste for mindless violence.
All history present in that visage, the child the father of the man.
Good prose!,Remember reading this the first time and thinking this book is pretty much going to be in the same status as Moby Dick.
https://altair.pw/pub/lib/Cormac%20Mccarthy%20-%20The%20Blood%20Meridian.pdf

[Anonymous No.22944666]

>>22944481
Its at once vivid and totally hallucinatory. There were so many images burned into my mind.
>The fields harboring a few last wolves.
>The kids sunk burning eyes standing above his opponents in the bar
>The storm as you said
>The coming upon the ruined church
>The aftermath of the Comanche attack
>The Judge appearing in the desert.

I can go and on. Narratively I don't find it the most compelling read(to one note). I actually prefer the story in other McCarthy novels. But in terms of pure descriptive power its a masterpiece.

[Anonymous No.22944678]

>>22940529
This is probably the last fiction book that has some traction on /lit/. I miss when this was a fiction board

[Anonymous No.22944700]

>>22944513
Examples?

[Anonymous No.22944703]

>>22944678
>This is probably the last fiction book that has some traction on /lit/. I miss when this was a fiction board
He rapes his sister, Phoebe.

[Anonymous No.22945028]

>>22944481
>The scene where the kid is travelling during a storm gave me the same feeling I get when it is actually storming. It somehow manages to replicate the power of nature which is pretty cool

Did this nigga just say a book made him feel like he was somewhere else, in another time and place. My nigga that’s literally the entire point of fiction. Ever heard of reading rainbow? I can go anywhere? Take a look it’s in a book reading rainbow? Jesus Christ no wonder this book gets sucked off so much. It’s entry level. Dudes will read it and discover the joys of reading for the first time. What a fucking exposure of exactly the type of mentality is required to enjoy this book. He actually said “I can picture the scenes so vividly. It’s like I’m hallucinating.”

[Anonymous No.22945038]

>>22940990
nobody in the history of mankind has ever looked at that and instantly thought "penis"
it's obviously a product of massive over-thinking

[Anonymous No.22945054]

>>22945038
It’s funny because you can compare almost anything in the world to a penis. Anything raising or lowering or twitching. Anything cylindrical or with a head, or pumping fluid. A door knob, a faucet handle, a water bottle, a shampoo bottle, a hat being taken off.

[Anonymous No.22945116]

>>22945038
That's not the picture. It's the dome of the sun before it clears the rim.
>>22945054
Write your book then.

[Anonymous No.22945124]

>>22945116
>It's the dome of the sun before it clears the rim.
idk still doesn't remind me of a big hard throbbing cock

[Anonymous No.22945143]

>>22943053
Some of the best quotes are about Glanton.
>That night Glanton stared long into tge embers of the fire. All about him his men were sleeping but much was changed. So many gone, defected or dead. The delawares all slain. He watched the fire and if he saw portents there it was much the same to him. He would live to look upon the western sea and he was equal to whatever might follow for he was complete at every hour. Whether his history should run concomittant with men and nations whether it should cease. He'd long forsworn all weighing if consequence and allowing as he did that men's destinies are given yet he usurped to contain within him all that he would ever be in the world and all that the world would ever be to him and be his charter written in the urstone itself he claimed agency and said so and he'd drive the remorseless sun onto its final endarkenment as if he'd ordered it all ages since, before there were paths anywhere, before there were men or suns to go upon them.

[Anonymous No.22945148]

>>22945143
>tge
stopped reading there. mccormick is a hack

[Anonymous No.22945208]

>>22945124
It's the tip of a phallus. Pull your foreskin back and get rock hard.

[Anonymous No.22945251]

>>22943563
>Also, the egregious use of the words "and" and "he" are more gross than any of the violence in the book.
This. What I remember the most about this boring book is "and and and and"

[Anonymous No.22945343]

>>22945251
Go complain to your book club, redditor

[Anonymous No.22945754]

>>22944264
What did he mean by this?
unironically

[Anonymous No.22945778]

>>22945754
Barbed wire killed the cowboy

[Anonymous No.22945819]

>>22945028
>>22945028
>This restaurant had the best tasting food I've ever had.
>omg! That's every restaurants goal. To have good tasting food. This must be a entry level restaurant.

[Anonymous No.22945830]

Notice how no one criticizing BM is giving a counter example of good writing?
Most of
>muh bad prose
Is really just
>Its to difficult for me to speed read.
Or worse.
>everyone's so unlikable. I need to identify with the characters.

[Anonymous No.22946270]

>>22945028
I just can't fathom being this mad at somebody being this mad at another person enjoying something. Gatekeep yourself from life, Nigga.

[Anonymous No.22946743]

It's the GOAT

[Anonymous No.22947904]

bump

[Anonymous No.22948047]

>>22945038
>this metaphor is totally original, never once thought of before in the history of mankind
How did you fail to realise that would be an enormous compliment? Anyway, it's not true: the sun-masculinity/phallus connection is ages old.

[Anonymous No.22948444]

>>22944223
It was arousing, it was violently arousing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZvhSqEVKi8

[Anonymous No.22948463]

>>22945028
Embarrassing post

[Anonymous No.22948475]

>>22944306
The visuals were fine. but nevertheless I often found it a little boring

[Anonymous No.22948479]

>>22945143
>typo

[Anonymous No.22948504]

>>22940529
I think part of the divisive and polarizing opinion of BM here is that its reputation has blown up and proceeds itself. I’d bet many beginner readers here pick this up as one of their first 50 books. Since they aren’t equipped to make a good judgement on it, they weigh it compared to the popularity here: I liked it and everyone talks about it? Amazing book. I didn’t like it and everyone talks about it? Overrated book. It has a tinge of Shakespearean syndrome where the reputation is hard to divorce from the actual text and judge objectively